Tuesday, May 27, 2008

What's the fuss about?

Joakim Noah gets arrested for having an open container of beer and upon being searched, actually has one joint in his pack of cigarettes. Why is this a big deal? Well, I blame Noah. Not the kid, but the father. You know, the one of tennis fame, won the French Open in 1983,...you know him. Well, he admitted a few years back that he and 'mary jane' used to get down prior to his tennis matches and didn't see a problem with it. So when the father says that, why are we surprised that the young Noah would see no problem with the same thing? I guess the only thing that I fault the elder Noah with is actually deciding to bring that out into the public eye. Yes, he was a star tennis player (the 2nd black man to win a Grand Slam Singles Event (the French Open) - the 1st was Arthur Ashe), a philanthropist (lots of charity involvement), and by all accounts a decent music star, but as we all know, certain things just don't help us get to where we want. If you want to talk about drug use and past indiscretions, let's wait till you're out of the public spotlight (Josh Howard needed to hear this before he talked about his past), and even then, know that anything you say can and will be held against you (or at least publicized) so that your kids (of which Noah has 5) will see it. So if your father told you, it's okay to do that, in most cases you're going to say ok, no problem,..I got it.

Now back to the younger Noah. You are black, 6'11", you have a distinct hair do,......why are you drinking in plain sight with weed on you? You can't be out impressing college age kids? Yes, you helped Florida win back-to-back National titles and you got drafted by one of the storied franchises in the NBA, so what were you thinking? Yes, it was just weed, but it's the thought process. You are famous, you have a target on your back and you put yourself in a situation where you are going to fail, or best case you have to talk the police out of arresting you. (I bet you that's what the call from John Paxson sounded like.) Now, I doubt that you'll get railroaded by other teams for one indiscretion, but at the same time, you are (possibly) messing up your money. Didn't we learn from Mike Vick and his bad math (winning $1000s on dog fighting and losing $100+M in contract and endorsement money)?

Go and get you some Cubans (cigars that is) and smoke those, it'll be cheaper in the long run.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As Archie and Edith once said, "Those were the days!"

C'mon man! You know how it is to have cash falling out of your pockets! Sometimes all those Grants and Franklins just won't fit, so instead of buying more crap or investing wisely, you try to parlay that money power into "I can get away with anything" power. What a dummy! How does a guy with no medium mid-range game feel as though he's untouchable? I guess I've already answered that one.

Two things and I'm done:

#1 - This should represent an opportunity for the NBA to expand its rookie symposium to year two and, I would advocate for this as well, to year three. Just talking to these young 20 year old millionaires once isn't enough; especially when those six digit checks haven't started rolling in yet.

#2 - How did this brotha pass a drug test at Florida? I'm not passing judgement on anyone, but do you really believe this is the first time he's rolled up? Either the testing was lax or he just never got called. Knowing who his father was, I would have had him in there weekly filling the cup.

Nonetheless, for someone with a "bad rep" already, this certainly didn't help.